Penal suggestions ‘impracticable’

Press, 18 March 1982, Page 10

Penal suggestions ‘impracticable’

PA Wellington A recommendation by the Penal Policy Review Committee favouring the use of volunteer officers was termed “naive and unrealistic" by the president of the New Zealand Association of Probation Officers, Mr Colin Hicks.

In its report, the committee suggests the use of “supervision orders" and said it thought that such an order offered scope for volunteer officers.

"There were several submissions supporting them," the committee said. "But we believe the professional orientation of the Probation Service had led to reluctance by officers to entertain the use of volunteers other than on a very temporary basis."

Mr Hicks said it was contended there would be a demonstrable and significant reduction in the incidence of people in prison as a result of the new measures.

"That is an assumption

which, it is contended, is a spurious assumption, a pious hope that is more likely to increase prison populations and costs than to reduce the incidence of imprisonment." he said. ■ “We do not believe that the new community-based sentences, based as they are on a movement away from social work to a method of surveillance and control, are going to be effective or desirable.

"They are likely, if enforced as the penal policy review suggests, to have the effect of increasing a punitive penal approach."

Mr Hicks said the design of the new penal policy had been predetermined by political expendiencies, cost-cut-ting. and a blind faith in a system in the United Kingdom which the proponents were trying to imitate. "All the flaws and disfunctions of that system are now manifesting themselves with increased prison populations and breakdowns in the com-

munity-based sentence." Mr Hicks said. “I think it is unrealistic because it is putting a good deal of its faith on a romantic notion of what constitutes the community."

Referring to the volunteer aspect of the proposal, Mr Hicks said New Zealand's "caring” community should be measured first on the way it tended to deal with old people. When old people became an embarrassment to families and the community there was a tendency to commit them to institutions. “If we cannot look after our old people and, indeed, cannot even look after the victims and complainants of crime, is it realistic to expect society to extend its care and concern to persons found guilty of serious criminal 1 expenses?" Mr Hicks said.

“I have not seen the caring community racing to provide support for rape crisis centres or other such victimorientated organisations. The

recommendation is naive and unrealistic. “It is a reaction which has been considered over a considerable amount of discussion and feedback from members. We are in the process of formulating a policy towards the penal policy review and its implications,” he said. - Mr Hicks said not only had the committee misunderstood the nature of crime and criminals, it also misunderstood the value of the Probation Service and the nature and extent of the work of probation officers.

“It is contended that recommendations for the com-munity-based sentences, such as the supervision order, the treatment order, and the community care order, are already embodied in the day-to-day work of probation officers within their terms of the present probation order." he said.

“Under the present probation method we are doing these three things that are suggested."